DoctorOz: Ted Bundy Survivor Rhonda Stapley Details Her Harrowing Escape

We're back talking about one of the most infamous serial killers of all time. Ted Bundy may have murdered more than 30 women, but there's also a small group of women who escaped Bundy's violent attacks. Rhonda Stapley was a 21-year-old college student in Utah when she says she was raped and almost murdered by Ted Bundy. She joins us now. Thank you for being here. Thank you for inviting me. I know this is not an easy interview. We haven't talked about this before. Take us back to 1974. How did you first meet Ted Bundy? I was attending the University of Utah as a pharmacy student, and I had a dental appointment downtown. It was a Friday afternoon, and I had just bought brand new hiking boots. So I rode the bus downtown, and after the dental appointment, I wanted to break in the new shoes, so I took a little walk about a mile to a little city park, and my mouth from the The dental procedure started to become un-numb. And I thought I should be finding a bus to get back to campus. So I went to the bus stop, and I waited and waited, but the bus didn't seem to be coming. And so instead of the bus coming, a tan-colored Volkswagen drove by. Drove by really slow, and then the driver pulled, kind of backed up a little bit and rolled down his window and asked me if I'd like a ride. And I said, well, where are you going? He says, up to the U. And I was too, and he invited me to ride with him, and so I did. So he said that he was going to the U, to the university, with you. Yeah. Yeah, so the plan was that he was going to drive me up to the university. And so I happily got in. It seemed like just a... He was very nice looking and he didn't seem scary in any way, didn't feel like hitchhiking. Everybody knows that hitchhiking is dangerous, you don't get in cars with strangers, but this didn't feel like that. This just felt like a college student helping another college student. What did you talk about before you realized there was an issue? We talked about things that people who don't know each other very well would talk about. I was telling him that I was a pharmacy student and he told me he was a first year law student and we talked about campus and the new bookstore. And we talked about... Small talk. Yeah, just small talk, road construction. When did you realize there was a problem? Well, he turned a different direction than was the normal route to the university. And I asked him about that, and he said, well, I hope you don't mind. He was very polite. He said, I hope you don't mind, but I have a little errand to run up by the zoo. And I didn't mind. I was with a law student. And I was not afraid at all until we got heading back into the city. And then we should have turned towards campus, and instead he turned a different direction and went up a different canyon. And that canyon's where the trip started to feel unsafe. Just not really scary, but an awkward, shy kind of conversation that he'd stop talking to me and was just gripping the steering wheel and just driving. And I was, of course, trying to make idle conversation and just small talk. and he was like shutting me out completely and so I'm thinking what is he thinking and what's going through my head is nothing dangerous at all what I'm thinking is he wants to find a place to park and pull over and and make out and I wasn't a make out kind of girl and so I'm I'm thinking that I need to worry about fending off a romantic episode not not an attack just an awkward situation. I don't want to embarrass either of us. I don't want him to think I'm a prude, but I also don't really want to make out with this guy. I don't know him. So he pulls into a like a deserted picnic area and turned the car off. And I'm thinking he's going to try to kiss me. And he turned in his seat and leaned in really close. And I thought he is going to try to kiss me. And then very quietly he said, do you know what? I'm going to kill you. And he put his hands on my throat and started squeezing. I'm sorry. He leans over, like you would normally if you were to kiss someone, just very calmly says, I'm going to kill you? Do you know what? I'm going to kill you. And then he started choking me. So we had this battle in the car, and he choked me unconscious and moved me out of the car to a picnic table. And the assault continued there. He would choke me until I was unconscious and then revive me and choke me until I was unconscious again or hold his hand over my nose and mouth so I couldn't breathe until I would pass out and then bring me back again. So during this process, what are you thinking? I'm thinking I'm going to die. This man is going to kill me. And I didn't see any way out of it. I just was preparing to die. I'm back with Rhonda Stapley, who was a 21-year-old college student when she says she was raped and brutally attacked by notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. So how did you not die? This man was pretty good at killing women. Killed over 30, at least. Well, I didn't know that, so I wasn't going to let that happen. That's what happened. But how did you even fight back? You're being choked unconscious. You're not in control. He's raped you. So I gather you're not even, at this point, able to do much except brainstorm ways of getting away. Yeah, and the last time, right after the rape, he choked me unconscious again. And so I was lying on the ground when I came to, and he had moved away. He was probably 30 feet away. Did you ever ask him why he was doing this? Probably, but I don't remember his answers. I mostly remember him talking to me and asking me how I'd like to die. He would put his hand over my nose and mouth and cut off my air. Or, do you prefer it when I do this? Sit on my chest really hard so that there's no room for your lungs to expand and kind of squash me and make it so I couldn't breathe. So this psychopath is asking you how you want to die and you awaken once and you mentioned he'd walked a bit further away. What was he doing? I don't know really what he was doing. Now with hindsight, I think maybe he was either moving the seat so that he could transport me to a better dumping site, or maybe he was looking for getting the crowbar so that he could make sure I was dead. I don't know, but I saw that he was far enough away that I just jumped and ran. And as soon as I took one or two steps, I fell, of course, but I happened to fall into a swift-moving mountain stream. That swept me away from him. Oh, my goodness. And that's probably what saved my life. The stream was ice cold. It wasn't very deep, but it was really, really fast. And, you know, I was bumping into rocks and boulders and pushed downstream away from him. I thought I was going to die again. You know, I've escaped him. I'm still going to die. From a drowning this time. Yeah. So after being banged up and swept, you know, in these eddy currents in every which way, how did you finally get out of the stream? What did you do when you got out? When I finally got out, because I had my boots on, I still had my clothes on, so I rearranged my clothes. And I said to myself, no one can ever know this happened to me. I felt embarrassed and stupid. Everybody knows you don't get in cars with strangers, and people will think that I was really stupid to have done that. First of all, do not be ashamed of what happened. There are a lot of very smart, bright women he murdered. The fact that you got away is a tribute to you just at the get-go. But I'm going to ask you what happened after you recovered. I completely understand why you wouldn't want to tell people. But at some point, you began to realize this guy in the news was that same person who had, in his tan Volkswagen, picked you up and tried to kill you. Yes, after I got out of the river and managed to get home and get cleaned up and decided to just suck it up, I didn't want anybody ever to know what had happened. And I planned to just suck it up and go on with my life. But you started seeing him on the news. Yeah, he was arrested for the kidnapping of Carol Duranche. And when that kidnapping happened, she, of course, gave the police a description of him and of his Volkswagen. And I knew that her description was exactly the description of my bad guy and that my bad guy was a very bad guy. And my mind is going to, they were finding bodies in the canyons and every week Ted Bundy was murdering somebody and somebody was either being found dead or somebody was disappearing. And I was feeling guilt and shame about not coming forward sooner and then he was arrested and I felt very good about that. So why'd you find this side to come forward with this enormous secret? Well years later, something like 37 years later, I was working at my job as a pharmacist and the boss decided to yell at me. And he yelled at me with the same vocal inflections and the same tonal qualities and even many Many of this very same wording. That Ted Bundy had used all those years before when I was sitting on the floor in the canyon crying and begging for my life. And it brought, opened all those things, those emotions that I thought I had handled but I really hadn't handled. I just stuffed them inside and pretended they'd never happened. It wasn't like I forgot, it's just that I didn't let my brain go there. And I found myself in a PTSD kind of nightmare. What kind of phrases was your boss using that reminded you of Ted Bundy? Well, Ted Bundy had said, He was really angry, had his fists clenched and veins were bulging on his neck and his face was red and he screamed, you don't have the right to whine and cry at me. You should be thanking me that you're even still breathing air. I can kill you anytime I want. And the boss said to me, also screaming and yelling and upset, you don't have the right to accuse me of anything. I can fire you anytime I want. You should be thanking me that you even still have a job with this company. And just the tone and the words and the idea that I was picked at random. I hadn't really done anything to deserve being fired. He was just deciding to fire people. And I hadn't deserved anything. Ted Bundy just decided to pick me out of the blue and felt unwarranted and way over-exaggerated response to whatever might have happened and undeserved. How did this affect every day of your life, keeping that secret? How did it affect your relationships? Deeper emotions. You mentioned that you thought you sort of put it off to the corner. Yeah, right away, right afterwards, I kind of just dropped out of all the social things I was in and quit going to church and quit going to activities and just sort of tried to stay away from people as much as possible. And at one point, I started self-medicating. My choice was some sleeping pills. And then finally, I got to where I could put those aside. And really go on with my life. So I graduated, got a good job, married, raised a family, had a lot of pets, good career, a very normal life and happy. And I thought that I had put Ted Bundy completely away. How has it affected you to come public, to tell your story? I never ever planned to really come forward publicly. What happened is I was trying to work through the PTSD symptoms. And in working through that, I didn't really want to tell anybody still. So I thought, what if I just write them down? And then when it's done, it kind of turned into a book. And that's why I decided that maybe I wasn't the only one. So crime correspondent Melissa Moore and psychiatrist Dr. Judith Joseph have been listening in. Dr. Joseph, can you describe the impact of keeping a secret of this magnitude? The impact that it has on people physically and also emotionally. Well, the way that Rhonda, and thank you for sharing your story. The way that Rhonda dealt with this trauma is very typical of how survivors deal with the trauma initially. They bottle it up because it's too hard to cope with it in that moment. But then over the years, things in the environment start to trigger these feelings of anxiety and depression. And then you start to feel crippled in your personal life, in your... occupational life, and that's why I'm so glad that you got the treatment that you got, because now you're able to heal, and by breaking your silence, you're helping so many other survivors. Melissa, you spent some time with Rhonda. You're helping work out some of the deep stuff that you got to figure out in order to talk about something so sensitive, so private, especially about this attack. What was the essence of your message to Rhonda? Well, something that stuck with me is there's a saying saying, you're only as sick as your secrets, and that is absolutely true. When you start to talk about what happened to people that are close to you at first and then you start to get bigger with your message, it really helps to... It takes a little bit of that poison away and it gets to the point where you tell your story so many times that it doesn't hurt anymore to tell it and I think with Rhonda that's a perfect example of where she's at. Every time a survivor comes forward it's a new message actually to somebody sitting at home listening like for instance right now they may have heard another survivor's story but maybe Rhonda's resonates differently with them because of her experiences. I'm very proud of you coming forward. I think you've got a wonderful story to tell. And thankfully, she put all that journal material and her experience into a book. It's called I Survived Ted Bundy. It is available now. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss out on new videos to live the good life.